Edward Fitzpatrick: R.I. can streamline rules, protect environment

Some say Rhode Island should get in line with what Massachusetts and Connecticut are doing. But Leslie W. Taito, director of Governor Chafee’s Office of Regulatory Reform, said, “I don’t think we want...

Some say Rhode Island should get in line with what Massachusetts and Connecticut are doing. But Leslie W. Taito, director of Governor Chafee’s Office of Regulatory Reform, said, “I don’t think we want to be a trail horse — view’s not great, smell’s awful. I say we be a leader.”

At a Rhode Island Public Expenditure Council forum in November, Taito made the case (in her own folksy way) that Rhode Island should take the lead in creating a regulatory system that is “clear, predictable and reliable.”

“I have a 10-year-old nephew in Tennessee that said to me on the phone: Hey, Auntie, how is the clear, predictable and reliable regulatory thing going for you?” said Taito, who grew up in Tennessee. “So I know that I’ve said it a lot.”

After repeating her mantra over the past two years, Taito leaves on Thursday to take a job at Hope Global, an industrial fabric maker in Cumberland. But before she goes, it’s worth looking at how she and Department of Environmental Management Director Janet L. Coit have demonstrated that economic development and environmental protection are not mutually exclusive goals.

“Director Coit and her team — it is impressive what they are doing,” Taito said at the forum. “I’ll give you an example. In their wetlands permitting process timeline, they have already taken 10 days out of that process — 10 working days. How cool is that?”

When she was at the Rhode Island Manufacturing Extension Service, Taito and others talked to Coit about the “lean” process-improvement principles. And after joining the state, Taito led the Office of Regulatory Reform in beginning a review of 1,642 state regulations used by 74 regulatory entities, including the DEM.

“We don’t want to go back to the days when the Blackstone River ran different colors depending on what color dye they put in the river that day,” Taito said this week. “We are looking for that better balance, and DEM is a prime example of a state department that has taken its charge seriously but understands some of the things they were doing were not customer-friendly.”

All too often, we are presented with a false choice between the economy and the environment. And, Coit said, “When people set up that false dichotomy, they impede any constructive dialogue.”

But the DEM is streamlining its regulatory processes without watering down its protection of water and air, Coit said. (And, I might add, without placing the DEM under a commerce secretary, as once proposed.) “We had a whole bunch of ‘Eureka!’ moments where we realized we could reduce the workload on us as well as the applicant while not relaxing the environmental outcome or objective,” she said.

Some steps were as simple as sending emails instead of letters, Coit said. One big step was an “express” policy that cuts in half the time to approve less-complicated environmental cleanup plans. In general, the DEM is trying to be clear about what it needs from applicants and quick about saying what’s permissible. “It’s a work in progress,” she said. “In no way am I nervous that it’s compromising our environmental objectives or goals. And it can improve the quality of applications.”

Coit said she hates to see Taito leave because she’s “one of the shining stars in state government,” but the DEM will continue making its regulations (to borrow a phrase) “clear, predictable and reliable.”